Terri Lyne Carrington at Melbourne International Jazz Festival

American drummer Terri Lyne Carrington arrives for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival this week. It’s her third visit to Australia, and much anticipated by her growing army of fans.

She brings with her, for the first time, her usual performing group, the five musicians who make up the oddly named sextet Social Science. It stands for the ‘scientific study of human society and social relationships’, says Carrington, who believes the name is perfectly apt. She’s an activist, working for social change.

‘I can’t really separate sexism and racism because I live every day as a black woman,’ she says. ‘I’m trying to help create a new generation of people who won’t have to deal with the same issues my generation had to deal with.’

[…] Social Science offers an unusual innovation for a jazz ensemble, with the inclusion of Kassa Overall (MC/turntable). A drummer, DJ and rapper, Overall provides verbal messages, poetry, even recordings of speeches that are cut into the music.

Carrington insists that featuring a DJ in a jazz group is far from an attempt by an old-fashioned musical form to catch up with more contemporary ideas. On the contrary, she says, ‘jazz is extremely contemporary, perhaps more contemporary than the others’. The inclusion of Overall is an attempt to connect with the current generation of listeners who appreciate that aesthetic.

‘We are just trying to be as creative as we can,’ she says. ‘Social Science is a merger of styles, definitely jazz meets R&B, or rock or fusion.’